4 out of 5

Created By: Tim and Eric

It’s pretty awesome seeing Tim play the somewhat straight man on Eastbound and Down and then return to the nonsense of Tim and Eric.  It’s also pretty awesome when the guys show that they can string together a longer narrative (a full 15 minute show’s worth!) that doesn’t peter out into Billion Dollar Movieness.  Awesome Show! would occasionally rear such gems, but undoubtedly the demands of more frequent writing made the ability to do so on a regular basis a bit taxing.  Interesting that Marilyn Manson appeared both in Tim and Eric and Eastbound and Down?  Who knows?  (…Who knows if it’s interesting…?)

So Tim and Eric and, why not, Zach Galifianakis are getting a last will and testament of somebody or other read to them and told that they’ll be getting ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS… if they live in a haunted house for the rest of their lives.  Zach says no in a wonderfully overstated fashion, but the boys convince him.  And they’re all wearing wigs.

Benny Hill and Three Stooges with a dash of generic scary movie parody and some tried and true T & E comfort-testing humor – not in the gross-out vein, just a fourth wall breaking stunt – and they’re all wearing great wigs.  It’s probably the most ‘friendly’ thing the duo plus Zach have done, and I don’t know what it means that I actually thought my dad might enjoy this.  Surely the Three Stooges aspect.

The ‘wrap up’ show is a reminder of what Tim and Eric bring to the table (in case the rather palatable humor of the special misled ya’) via fifteen or so more minutes of, essentially, repeating one line over and over and over again, harkening back to Adult Swim shows like Space Ghost where we’d dare to have a joke beaten into the ground for the whole runtime.  Indirectly funny; brave stuff.  The special itself ends conceptually humorously but you keep expecting a line to be crossed that never really is.  Still, totally a great teaser of what might be in store for the upcoming ‘Bedtime Stories’ series.